"Well, I'm to be here a month, making charts and tables and reports for
the Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for anything . . . do
you want me now?"
"No-o, no, not now," I answered.
"Well, if you _do_ want me for anything--anything at all, mind, just
pass the word and the charts and the tables and the reports and the
Royal Geographical Society may go to the . . . Well, somewhere."
I laughed and rose and told him he ought to go, though at the bottom of
my heart I was wishing him to stay, and thinking how little and lonely I
was, while here was a big brave man who could protect me from every
danger.
We walked together to the door, and there I took his hand and held it,
feeling, like a child, that if I let him go he might be lost in the
human ocean outside and I should see no more of him.
At last, struggling hard with a lump that was gathering in my throat, I
said:
"Martin, I have been so happy to see you. I've never been so happy to
see anybody in my life. You'll let me see you again, won't you?"
"Won't I? Bet your life I will," he said, and then, as if seeing that my
lip was trembling and my eyes were beginning to fill, he broke into a
cheerful little burst of our native tongue, so as to give me a "heise"
as we say in Ellan and to make me laugh at the last moment.
"Look here--keep to-morrow for me, will ye? If them ones" (my husband
and Alma) "is afther axing ye to do anything else just tell them there's
an ould shipmate ashore, and he's wanting ye to go 'asploring.' See?
So-long!"
It had been like a dream, a beautiful dream, and as soon as I came to
myself in the hall, with the visitors calling at the bureau and the
page-boys shouting in the corridors, I found that my telegraph-form,
crumpled and crushed, was still in the palm of my left hand.